


Questions

by emungere



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-03
Updated: 2005-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-28 00:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2713131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gojyo, after six weeks, is used to not asking questions. It's not that he doesn't have them--<em>Where did you come from? What happened to you? How did you end up in the middle of the road with half your guts hanging out of your body? What's your name?</em>--it's just that he doesn't figure it's any of his business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Questions

Gojyo, will you get the frying pan down for me, please?"

"Huh?" Gojyo says. And then, "Oh, yeah. Sure." He transfers his cigarette from his hand to the corner of his mouth, gets up from the table, and gets the frying pan down.

He wonders, a little, why good old John Doe here wanted it up there in the first place--top shelf of the cabinet to the left of the sink--when he needs it damn near every day. When he can't make the stretch himself because it pulls the wound across his stomach, still not quite healed. Gojyo wonders, but doesn't ask. 

Gojyo, after six weeks, is used to not asking questions. It's not that he doesn't have them-- _Where did you come from? What happened to you? How did you end up in the middle of the road with half your guts hanging out of your body? What's your name?_ \--it's just that he doesn't figure it's any of his business.

Or at least, he figures John Doe thinks it's none of his business. And he's not going to stick his nose in where he's not wanted.

"Thank you," his house-guest says gravely, when Gojyo sets the cast iron pan on the stove. "And we could use some chicken for dinner, if you wouldn't mind going to the store?"

"Sure," Gojyo says. He pulls on his boots and heads out the door.

It's about a quarter mile to town, and today it's a quarter mile of wet and hot and mud that sticks to his boots. He slaps a horse fly on his arm, and gets fly guts and what is probably mostly his own blood all over his palm. Ugh.

At the butcher's he gets breasts and legs and thighs and a lecture about how to cook them, as if he'll be the one doing the cooking. He's turning to leave when one of the guys from the bar comes in.

"Hey, Gojyo! Man, we haven't seen you around in forever. The missus got you on a tight leash, huh?" He smirks a little, though it's more commiserating than insulting.

"Missus?" Gojyo wonders if he looks as blank as he feels.

"Well, some of the guys are saying you got hitched, but it's just some chick you're shacked up with for a while, right? Love can do weird things to you, man. Believe me, I know." He turns to place his own order with the butcher and looks back to Gojyo. "She send you up here for dinner?"

"Yeah," Gojyo says. "Dinner."

The guy nods. "Me too. I'd ask if you wanted to get a beer, but you know how it is. Gotta get home, you know?"

Gojyo nods and heads out without answering. Along with _What's your name?_ and _Why the heck do you want the frying pan up there?_ he suddenly has a whole new set of questions.

When he gets home and his house-guest has the chicken frying on the stove with something that smells lemony and herby and smokey all at once, he decides to ask one. Just one couldn't hurt.

"Taste this," John Doe says. He blows on the contents of the wooden spoon to cool it and holds it up, hand cupped underneath to catch the drips.

Gojyo tastes. "S'good," he says. "Real good."

"It doesn't need more salt?"

"Not for me." Gojyo pauses. Maybe he shouldn't ask. But then the words are coming out of his mouth anyway, before he's decided anything at all. "How come," he says, and stops. But it's stupid to stop now. "How come you do all this? The cooking and all. You don't have to."

He doesn't even look up, just stirs the juice gathered in the bottom of the pan, scraping the bottom with his spoon. "Perhaps I do it to remind myself of what I used to be."

_What did you used to be?_ joins Gojyo's list of unasked questions. "Oh," he says. "You wanna play cards after dinner?"

For this question he gets a barely-there smile. "Are you ready to lose again so soon?"

"I gotta win sooner or later."

"You would think so, wouldn't you?"

Gojyo doesn't really think he's talking about cards anymore, so he doesn't answer.

They eat dinner-- _Gojyo, will you please take your feet off the table? Eat with your fork and not your fingers? Put your napkin in your lap?_ \--and clean up. He washes; Gojyo dries and puts away.

"Gojyo, will you please take out the trash?"

So he does. Out by the trash can, he stops, feeling sweat stick his hair and shirt to his back.

_The missus got you on a tight leash, huh?_

The stuff he gets asked to do now would piss him off if it was some girl asking him to do it. But it's Mr. No-Name with the half-dead smile and the dark eyes asking, and it doesn't. Maybe it's just the novelty, like having a panther walk into his house and ask him to dust the living room-- _and do be sure to get behind the books, that's where it builds up, you know._

Maybe it's just habit. There was so long when the wound kept him from doing anything at all--Gojyo even had to hold the piss bottle for him, and neither of them enjoyed that--and now it's automatic.

He hasn't ever thought, no, I shouldn't go play cards tonight because he wouldn't approve, or no, I shouldn't go home with that girl because...because whatever. He hasn't thought _I shouldn't_. He just doesn't go out, doesn't go home with that girl, doesn't say no when he's asked to get chicken or pick up his socks or take out the trash.

It doesn't feel like a tight leash, though he guesses it might look that way from the outside. He doesn't feel trapped like has sometimes when girls get too serious.

It's not that he likes slogging through mud to get dinner or taking out the trash or splitting wood--and he had asked about that: _"What do we need wood for in the middle of summer?" "You'll need it later."_ You, he noted. Not we.

He doesn't dislike it, either. It's just the way things are, feels like the way things have always been, or maybe just the way things should've always been. Who is this guy, that he can make six weeks seem like a lifetime?

Gojyo grinds his cigarette out and dusts his hands off and goes back inside.

The cards are already dealt, and he sits down at the table and picks up his hand. It doesn't occur to him to ask for another shuffle of the deck. It's safer to enjoy his luck while it lasts.


End file.
